


Missed Connections

by CommaSplice



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 01:25:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4587753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommaSplice/pseuds/CommaSplice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa Stark has sunk everything she has into her new business and a new home. In order to pay the mortgage, she rents out an apartment to Stannis Baratheon, who is starting over after his divorce. She wants to be friends. He wants to be left alone. Can they learn to get along?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missed Connections

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sarah_Black](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah_Black/gifts).



> I’ve aged Sansa to her twenties. Margaery, Arya, Shireen, Rickon, and Bran are adults as well.

* * *

Sansa was getting pretty sick of the way everyone was trying to dissuade her. Her family, her friends, even the realtor, all of them had been very unenthusiastic about the house.

“It’s a dump,” Arya told her flat out after everyone else had danced around the subject.

“No, it’s not.” Sansa crossed her arms. “It has so much potential.”

The smile on Margaery’s face was kind. 

No, not kind, Sansa thought, patronizing. If they weren’t openly denigrating her good sense, they were treating her like she was a child. 

“The two previous owners were foreclosed upon. It’s too big and too expensive for you. How can you possibly do all the renovations and still get your textile business going? Really, I’m surprised at you, Sansa. I thought you had more sense.”

Margaery then subjected Sansa to the same mantra everyone had been giving her for months: what Sansa needed to do was wait. Once she was married to Willas, it wasn’t as if she was going to need to work anyhow. There was a perfectly good little building on the Tyrell estate that Margaery was certain Willas would have made into a nice little studio for her where she could dabble in these little projects in her spare time. Willas wouldn’t mind, Margaery assured her. 

_Little_

“You’re going to buy it anyway, aren’t you?” Arya demanded after Margaery had waltzed off to her speaking engagement—yet another quasi-political event designed to put her in the news before she announced her candidacy. 

Sansa spread out the specs for the house. “The property is zoned for commercial and residential use. I would have an entire floor for my business. The flat upstairs is perfect for me. It just needs some work.”

“Some? Someone etched blood magic symbols on the floor of the upstairs hallway. There are holes in the walls. Speaking of walls, there’s not enough primer in the world to cover over the George Clinton/Salute to Funk floor-to-ceiling mural in the master bedroom.”

“Okay, a lot,” Sansa acknowledged. “But it’s all surface, Arya. The last owner had the electrical redone. The plumbing is good. The windows were replaced and the roof is brand new. Those are the expensive repairs. And you promised you’d help.” Sansa didn’t understand why she was the only one who could see the house’s potential. 

“I hate to bring this up, but what about Willas? I thought you said he didn’t want to leave Highgarden.”

Sansa twisted the engagement ring on her finger. “He doesn’t.”

“So you’re going to go into debt; buy this huge house that you can’t really afford; make me and and Bran and Rickon do all the work; and then you’re going to abandon it when you get married?”

“We haven’t told anyone yet, but we’re over.”

Arya frowned. “But you said he was the one. That after Joffrey—”

“I was wrong.” Sansa shrugged. “I liked the idea of him, I guess. I . . .” It was hard to explain when it was something she had been struggling with acknowledging for months now. “After what happened . . . with everything . . . I thought he was what I needed. I thought the Tyrells were what I needed, but . . . they’re . . . so suffocating.”

Arya snorted. “Well, I can’t argue with you there.”

“The house is in a great location. I already have a small customer base. I can make it grow. I know I can.” Sansa pushed over the sheets with her figures. She had never been very good at arithmetic. “I need to make this work.”

Arya sighed, but began doing calculations. 

“I could rent out the third-floor apartment.” Even if it lacked the character of the lower two flats, it would require less work than the rest of the place. Once it was painted, someone with a little imagination could make it into a great space.

“You’re going to have to.”

* * *

“It’s very . . .” Renly broke off, lifted his arms, and waved vaguely around the empty living room. Whatever he had been about to say, it was not positive.

“You can do a lot with the place,” the prospective landlady was saying. 

Stannis nodded. Although Ms. Stark’s enthusiasm both in person and on the phone seemed excessive to him, the apartment was exactly as stated: large sunny one-bedroom modern apartment, with eat-in kitchen, hardwood floors throughout. 

Everything seemed in good repair. The fixtures were brand new; the water pressure was excellent; and Ms. Stark assured him multiple times that everything would be painted. “Try and see past the drywall,” she kept telling them.

“It’s very . . .” Renly repeated. 

The young woman made a point of turning to Stannis. “It includes the use of a washer and dryer in the basement and off-street parking. You would have access to the back porch too.”

“It’s a third-floor walk-up,” Renly muttered. “You need to ask these things before you drag me out here with you.”

Stannis forbore pointing out that he had neither asked for his younger brother’s assistance nor his company. 

“No one is going to want to visit you if they have to climb three flights of stairs.”

That was enough for Stannis. “To whom should I write the check?”

* * *

The tour had been difficult for Willas with his leg—not that he would ever complain, of course—but of everyone, he was the only person not to stare at her like she had three heads. “I’m impressed,” he said as he sank down onto one of the kitchen chairs.

Of course, the house was finally at a point where it looked habitable. Better than she did, Sansa thought, as she caught sight of her hands and chipped fingernails. 

She was pouring the tea when her tenant knocked at her door to give her the rent check. As always, he was clad in attire that a funeral director might have thought too somber. He responded to her friendly inquiries in clipped tones. Yes, he was fine. The apartment was satisfactory. No, he needed nothing. 

“You didn’t tell me you were renting to Stannis Baratheon,” Willas said after her tenant had left.

“You know him?” Mr. Baratheon was Joffrey’s uncle, but she’d never met Mr. Baratheon before that day he’d come to look at the place. Joffrey had never had much use for his father’s side of the family. She’d never even met Joffrey’s father, for that matter. He’d been at a rehabilitation facility during the one disastrous visit she’d made to his mother’s. 

“Loras is dating his brother.” Willas paused a few seconds before continuing, “To hear Renly tell it, Stannis is a piece of work.”

Sansa tucked the rent check into her purse. “He’s very quiet and he pays on time.”

“Well, it’s not like you’ll ever be friends,” Willas allowed. “Sansa, are you . . . are you certain this is what you want? You could have a business in Highgarden. I wouldn’t mind.”

She looked at his earnest, kindly face and her resolve hardened. The Tyrells were the first to claim to be feminists. Margaery had been encouraged to believe that she could do anything. They were politically and socially liberal, but yet somehow . . . somehow when it came to her, that didn’t apply. She didn’t know if it was because of the trust fund that wouldn’t be hers until she married or the claim to what was left of the Winterfell business, or just because the Tyrells put their family first always and she wasn’t really family, but to them she might as well have been Betty Draper—some kind of prize for the Tyrells to claim, a child to be indulged. “Here,” Sansa said, as she hooked her fingers around the handle of a paper shopping bag filled with velvet-covered boxes. “The jewelry you gave me.”

“Sansa . . . you don’t have to. Please, I want you to keep it. Besides, we might . . .”

But she insisted and when he’d finally left, Sansa was struck by how much lighter she felt. 

Later when she was returning from one of her still innumerable trips to Lowe’s she ran into Mr. Baratheon, who was disposing of his recycling.

“Everything is fine,” he said the moment he saw her, looking vaguely panicked at having to interact with her. 

Maybe she had been a little overeager to make sure his apartment was all it should be. “Good.” Sansa removed the paint cans and yet another bag filled with blue painter’s tape—she’d lost count of the number of rolls she’d purchased. 

He stood with his bag of plastic and glass bottles seeming very uncertain. “You’re doing the painting yourself.”

Sansa looked down and realized to her horror that there was still a smudge of "Frisky Blue" in eggshell all over her left arm—the remnants of her third attempt at covering over the Funkadelic mural. “Yes.”

“That is surprising.”

“Why?”

“I assumed you had hired professionals.”

The implication being that she was too delicate or too spoiled to do the work herself, Sansa thought. “My siblings have helped me, but usually it’s just me. I can’t afford to hire people for something that basic.”

He flushed. “No, I meant that the painting in my apartment looked like the work of professionals.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

A stiff, bitter, self-righteous, divorced prick, was how Loras had described Mr. Baratheon to Willas. 

But it occurred to Sansa that Mr. Baratheon just didn’t seem to know how to respond or even how to end the conversation. Maybe he was just not very social. She nodded. “Good night.”

* * *

Stannis stared at the plant his daughter set on his mantel. “Shireen—”

“I just thought you could use something—anything—to brighten up the place.”

He looked around the living room of his third floor flat. “But it is bright.”

“More cheerful.” Shireen sighed. “It’s like a hospital in here. Why don’t you ask them if you can paint?”

In fact, he had been given a choice of paint colors by the landlady, a dizzying array of hues and textures, but Stannis had settled on white and high gloss in all the rooms. “This is what I picked.”

“Oh. Well, maybe you can put up some art.”

The landlady seconded this idea when she came by later that evening to let him know that some workmen were coming and that he shouldn’t park in the driveway for a few days.

“Oh, the jade plant is a nice touch!” she exclaimed. “The green really pops with the walls and the dark furniture. Oh, and you know, if you hung a spider plant over by the window and maybe got a, hmmm, you know, there’s a great nursery a few streets over. I bet you could put some orchids on that sofa table and—”

“—thank you, Ms. Stark, I shall be sure to park in the street until the workmen are done.”

The young woman held up her hands. “I promised myself I wouldn’t be one of those busy body landladies when I bought this house and look at me.”

Stannis moved to shut the door. 

“I’ll let you know when the workmen are finished,” she said, backing up, and craning her neck by him for one last look. “Orchids. Definitely.”

* * *

Sansa ignored Rickon and Arya’s groans. “Hang on. The rug isn’t straight.”

Bran swiveled his wheelchair to gain a better vantage point. “More to the right.”

She tugged. “Better?”

“Yeah, I think.”

“How about I straighten the rug while you get the hernia lifting this table?” Rickon asked.

“Because you don’t have an eye.” Sansa stood up and looked before finally nodding. “Okay, you can put it back down.” 

They obeyed with alacrity. 

The loom was harder to deal with, but they had the sense and the grace to be gentler with that. And their labor was free, Sansa reminded herself. For all their grousing, her siblings had given very generously of their time to help and advise her.

“Is the loom really that loud?” Bran wanted to know when they were devouring the pizza she’d ordered for them as a reward. 

Sansa finished the bite of her salad before replying. “Mr. Baratheon could hear it all the way upstairs so yes, it must be.” She had never thought of it as noise. Weaving was something that engaged her and the accompanying sounds were soothing to her. 

“You’re not like weaving at 3:00 in the morning, though, right?” Rickon asked as he reached for another piece of pizza.

“Of course not! He was just home that afternoon. I didn’t realize or I would have found something quieter to do.” The Seven knew she had no dearth of tasks. 

“It’s your house and your business,” Arya pointed out. “If Mr. Stick-Up-His-Bum can’t deal, then that’s his problem.”

Sansa didn’t agree. She was just being considerate. Other than buying the loom feet, it hadn’t cost her anything other than their labor to make these changes. And she kind of felt sorry for Mr. Baratheon. She had never seen him smile. Not once. He seemed so . . . so resigned all of the time. It was a small enough thing to have to do.

* * *

Stannis shifted the cardboard box to gain better purchase and to allow him to rap sharply on his landlady’s door for the second time.

The mysterious clitter-clattering noises stopped and he heard the sounds of footsteps. Ms. Stark opened the door. “Hi! Oh, I hope I wasn’t being too loud for you. I know you were annoyed by the noise the other day.” 

Stannis shifted the box again. “It has not been that noticeable of late.”

“Oh, I’m so relieved! I had my brother and sister help me put a rug with a pad underneath the table and I got loom feet for the Leclerc Dorothy.”

“The Lecl—”

She opened the door wider. “My table loom.”

Behind Ms. Stark, Stannis could see what he thought must be the aforementioned loom and behind that bright colorful fabric draped positively everywhere. 

“I work out of the house. I’m a fiber artist.”

Stannis was unclear what a fiber artist did, and made the mistake of asking. Before he knew it, the landlady began giving him a tour of the first floor which she used exclusively for her business, talking animatedly about warp and weft and Dornish textiles and cautioning him that should he want a really perfect green, he should only use the stinging nettles of northern Greywater and _not_ southern Greywater.

Stannis withstood Ms. Stark’s enthusiasm, but when she finally paused to draw breath, he held up the box. “I found this by my door. I think it must be yours.”

Ms. Stark beamed. “Nope, those are for you.”

He looked down at the red flowers. “I don’t understand. Someone left this for me?”

“They’re orchids. For your apartment. The red will be a nice pop of color.”

“Ms. Stark, I cannot—”

“—Call me Sansa.”

Stannis had no intention of doing any such thing. “Ms. Stark—”

“They’ll be perfect for your place. You have such a spare aesthetic, but those will give your living room some warmth and an—”

He had never realized he had an aesthetic at all, let alone a spare one, whatever that meant. “Ms. Stark, I cannot accept a gift from you. You are my landlady. I am your tenant. Nothing more. We are not friends.”

The young woman stiffened as if he’d struck her. “They are not a gift from me.”

There was only one other conclusion that could be drawn. “I did not authorize you to make purchases on my behalf.”

“Your daughter stopped by with them earlier. You weren’t here so I left those for you by your door.”

“Oh.” 

The enthusiasm Ms. Stark had been displaying deflated like air from a balloon. “Every copper star I have I put into my business. I don’t have any left over for gifts, especially not for strangers.”

“I should not have assumed—”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

She was angry, he realized. “I am sorry, but it was a logical—”

“—as you just said, we are not friends. Why would you think I’d go buy you orchids?”

“Ms. Stark—”

“I don’t understand you. You back away in terror any time I ask how you’re doing. I was just being polite. I’ve poured everything I have and then some into this business and I thought you were . . . I thought you were interested in my work. Well, you’re not. You’ve made that really clear so why don’t you go back upstairs to your sterile white walls and your _Nature_ documentaries and leave me alone?”

“How did you know I watch _Nature_ documentaries?” he demanded.

Ms. Stark opened the door and pointedly waited for him and his box to leave. “Logical guess.”

* * *

Arya looked up from the screen of her smartphone. “He’s an asocial weirdo. Why does it matter if your tenant doesn’t want to be friends? I don’t want to be friends with my landlord.”

Sansa thought she was missing the point. “I don’t need to be friends with him. I just want to have a civil relationship.”

“You don’t get this, do you? You give him shelter. He gives you money in exchange. That’s your ‘relationship.’ ”

“What does your landlord do when he sees you?”

“He says ‘Hi. How about those Stormland Stags?’ ”

“And what do you do?”

Arya shrugged. “I say ‘Hey. Yeah, they’re really sucking this season.’ ”

“ _That’s_ what I want from him.”

“You want to talk about a crappy baseball team with your tenant?”

“No, I just want our occasional encounters to be polite. It doesn’t need to be about baseball. I just want that basic level of civility.”

Arya rolled her eyes and returned to her phone, periodically reading aloud from craigslist’s missed connections while Sansa set up the swift and the ball winder. “Oh, here’s a good one. ‘Curvy red-haired babe at yard sale: Our hands touched when we both put our fingers on the same Wayne Newton LP at the yard sale on Jaehaerys and King. You were looking fine with your beautiful tits almost falling out of your tight red dress. Thought we shared a moment. If you see this, tell me what I was wearing and what I said about Wayne Newton.’ ”

“They’re not all like that,” Sansa said. She knew she should never have confessed to reading the personals.

“Uh huh. ‘Hot blond guy in the green plaid shirt in the garden department at Home Depot. You were with a bitchy blonde buying a hose reel. Anything you want, anyway you want it.’ Well, that’s very romantic, much more so than the guy lusting after the busty Wayne Newton fan.”

She undid the last knot. “You’re deliberately reading all the bad ones.” 

“They’re all bad.”

Sansa sighed. “It’s the idea behind them, all right? Like you have this moment and in that instant, you just _know_ , but it passes and now you can’t stop thinking about the other person and this is your second chance. Where maybe if the gods are kind, you can reconnect with that person and you’ll be with the person you’re supposed to be with. Maybe it’s just a bad day, but sometimes the ads are about those kinds of encounters. That’s why I read them.” 

Arya absorbed this, paused to take a sip of her drink, and then returned to her phone. “ ‘DILF in Crackclaw’s Coffee Shop.’ ”

Sansa looked up. Crackclaw’s was a neighborhood establishment. It looked like an old school diner, but served some of the best coffee and pastries in the area and even though money was tight, she went there daily. 

“ ‘Guessing u have a killer case of TMJ, but u have the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. U nearly ripped off the head of the barista for offering to leave room for cream. I had to threaten to get physical with u. If u see this, tell me what I said to u to get u to leave the poor kid alone. Willing to pay the iron price to see what’s underneath your trousers.’ Okay,” Arya admitted. “That’s kind of hot.”

“Oh my gods.”

“Did you get that stupid thing tangled again?”

Sansa shook her head. “The man in the missed connections ad. That’s Mr. Baratheon. My tenant.”

“He’s gay?” Arya frowned. “He’s so asocial he won’t even say ‘how about those Stormland Stags?’ but he’ll put an ad in the personals for some random guy he’s never met for a hook up?”

“No, well, I don’t know. He might be gay. But he’s the guy in the personal.” Sansa knew she wasn’t being very clear. “I think he’s the person being sought.”

“The DILF?”

Sansa hated that term; it was so vulgar. “I wasn’t there, but I heard about it when I went in to get my nonfat vanilla macchiato. I guess they nearly called the police. It has to be him. He is always grinding his teeth and he does have blue eyes, really blue eyes. I was there once when he was buying his coffee and he’s super particular about it.”

Arya turned back to her phone. “It’s under WFM. So he could still be gay. Is he hot?”

Sansa stopped winding. She had never really stopped to think about him in that way. “He’s kind of attractive in a . . . in a sort of a way.” He wore his hair very short and he grimaced all the time, but if he could ever relax and maybe just smile, Sansa thought he could be quite nice-looking.

“He’s gotta be old if he’s listed as a DILF.”

She thought. “Forty-five? Fifty?” 

“Old.”

There would have been a time when Sansa would have agreed with that, but now that she was herself an adult, forty-five didn’t sound that beyond the pale. 

“Too bad Jeyne’s not here. I know she likes the older gentlemen.”

“Why do you keep bringing that up? Beric wasn’t that old. He was like twenty-five at the time and it was unrequited.”

Arya was snickering. “Didn’t stop you two from riding your bikes past his house every free moment you had.” 

Sansa began winding. The trick was to take her time because if she went too fast, the yarn would snag and it would take forever to fix it. “I bet he doesn’t know.”

“I’m pretty sure Beric figured it out. You two were there like twice a day, stopped in front of his driveway, giggling like—”

“—I meant Mr. Baratheon probably doesn’t know.”

Arya shrugged. 

“If it was me, I would want to know.”

“So you’re telling me that if there was a missed connections ad for like: ‘Ginger-tressed goddess: I mixed four cans of paint three times for you at the Lowe’s on Route 41 because you wanted it to be perfect. I was a bad, bad boy for getting it wrong. I should be punished. Tell me what the shade was and you can make me beg,’ you would still want to know?”

For one horrible moment, Sansa froze as she recalled the creepy middle-aged clerk in the paint aisle, the one who always stared at her so intensely and who was so deferential. “You made that up. Tell me you made that up.”

Arya snickered. 

Sansa resisted the urge to hit Arya, and then after the relief finished washing over her, and she realized that she could, in fact, set foot in the Lowe’s on Route 41 again, she returned to the puzzle of Mr. Baratheon’s admirer. “I think I know who it is—at the coffee place, I mean,” she said slowly. Crackclaw’s was run by a couple of people, none of whom looked like they’d be any good in a physical altercation, but there was one regular patron, who Sansa was pretty sure was actually Ironborn. She always sat with her back to the wall, doing the Double Crostic in ink, but she gave off an impression of being very tough. “I think it’s that dark-haired woman, the thin one, with those fantastic arms. I asked her about her workout regimen once and she got kind of cryptic.”

“So what? You’ve been saying your tenant gets freaked out if you just say hi to him. Imagine his reaction when you knock on his door and say ‘there’s a woman on the internet who wants to blow you because she got turned on when you nearly beat up some minimum-wage earning barista for leaving room for milk in your coffee?’ ”

It did sound impossible when Arya put it like that, but she couldn’t help thinking that Mr. Baratheon had a right to know, even if it was so that he went somewhere else for his red eye with lemon peel and a pinch of salt.

* * *

After their last encounter, Ms. Stark had gone out of her way not to interact with him. His relief was mitigated by the feeling that he had been very much in the wrong. And when during a phone conversation, Shireen confirmed everything Ms. Stark had said, his discomfort grew.

“I wanted her to let me in, but she said she couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t even let me in the hallway, but she said she’d put the box by your door.”

Although Stannis was relieved to hear that his landlady had been cautious when it came to accessing his apartment, it also meant that he had been entirely in the wrong. 

“I got to see her studio, though. She’s really talented, but I think she’s having a hard time getting her business going. You should buy something from her. Some art would really help your apartment, Dad.”

He dismissed the idea immediately, but a week later when he received an invitation to Renly’s housewarming, it occurred to him that he could make amends and save himself a trip to a shopping mall at the same time. 

Ms. Stark was nowhere near as grateful for his business as he had expected her to be, but she let him into the studio, this time, thankfully, without providing any commentary as to how she achieved a really perfect green. 

But if she wasn’t telling him about loom feet or nettles, she wasn’t giving him any guidance either. Stannis stood in the center of the studio uncertain what to do or to say. He took a few steps forward and poked at lengths of homespun or at strange instruments. He finally settled on an object that looked interesting. “Perhaps this?”

“That’s my swift and it’s not for sale.”

“Your . . . swift.”

“The thing you’re pointing at that looks like a miniature umbrella clothes dryer.”

Stannis started. “I thought it was a . . . sculpture of some sort.”

Her lips twitched. “It’s used for unwinding skeins of yarn.”

“Oh?”

Ms. Stark pointed to a brilliant magenta pile of yarn on a work table. “If I tried to knit from that, it would become hopelessly tangled. So I take off those little ties and I fit it around the swift like the skein that’s on there now. And then I hook it up to the ball winder and I can turn that into something I can work from.” 

“From which you can work,” he corrected while he stared at the swift. “My mother used to make my brother or I hold up our arms and she would do something similar with the yarn.”

“That works too. Or you can use a chair back, but those options take longer than the swift and I don’t have a lot of time these days.”

“This is very colorful,” he said of the yarn on the swift. 

Ms. Stark sighed. “I don’t sell my yarn. I spent a lot of time on that. It’s hand painted and it’s for a particular commission I’m making. Are you trying to buy a gift for someone who knits? There’s a local yarn shop down the street. I’m sure they could help you find something.”

It occurred to Stannis that he had offended her again, but he didn’t understand how. “My brother has moved into a new apartment with his domestic partner. He is having a housewarming party. I thought I might buy something from you.”

Her face cleared. “Well, I don’t know your brother, but I know Loras and he’s not going to want yarn. Why don’t you come over here?”

“I didn’t mention his partner’s name to you.”

“I was engaged to Willas Tyrell for about three months. We still talk. What were you thinking of buying them? Something like a wall hanging or something more practical or . . .?”

She had led him into the room at the front of the flat. And if it still did not seem quite as ordered as a proper shop might have been, at least he could make sense of the objects. Ms. Stark questioned him until she had a price range and then presented him with several options. 

When he selected and paid for a table runner that she assured him would be appropriate, she offered to wrap it for him. He found himself staring as she selected a heavy cream paper with a faint dull gold pattern. Instead of applying tape, she proceeded to make artful folds around the box. Finally, she secured it all with a tiny piece of tape and then fished out a black ribbon and what appeared to be twigs. Somehow by the time she was done, it all looked very intentional. 

“I make the paper myself,” Ms. Stark told him when he expressed surprise. “And the Pentoshi wrapping method looks so much nicer than the way most people do it. It uses less paper too so it’s more ecologically sound.” She placed the wrapped box carefully in a shopping bag and handed it to him. 

He was about to state that it would be ecologically sounder to dispense with both the box and the paper, when she continued, “I think about presentation a lot. It makes such a difference.” She looked up at him. “You don’t, though.” The way she said it, it felt not like criticism, but like a simple statement. “That’s all right. You have substance. You probably don’t worry about presentation.”

“Thank you, Ms. Stark.”

“Sansa,” she corrected. “Look, my sister put it in perspective for me. You don’t want to be friends. I get it. But I see you every day and you live in my house, so if we can’t be friends, maybe we can be friendly? ‘Ms. Stark’ makes me feel like I’m sixty-five. Just call me Sansa, all right?”

She seemed to be waiting for a response, but he wasn’t sure how to respond.

“This is where you say, ‘I’d like that and please call me Stannis.’ ”

Friendly not friends. Yes, he could live with that. “I’d like that, but I cannot call you anything but Ms. Stark.”

She flinched, but then she shrugged. “Formal and friendly. It’s a deal.”

* * *

Until Sansa once again found herself in the paint department of the Lowe’s on Route 41, she had been 99.9% certain that Arya had been joking about the would-be submissive clerk in search of his red-haired goddess, but now that .1% doubt was coming back to haunt her.

“Take your break, Todd. I will help the lady.”

“If I take my break now, I have five hours to work through,” Todd objected.

It had just been Arya clowning around, Sansa told herself. Her sister had been irritated at being dragged to Lowe’s for the fifth time that day and annoyed that Sansa was so insistent on getting the right color for the bedroom and had made up the ad to mess with her.

The slightly creepy, very intense clerk with the disturbing grey eyes, who never wore a name tag, Sansa noticed, was very insistent that Todd take his break right now and was instantly at her side. 

Todd slunk off to the break room muttering about getting his GED so he could leave this racket forever. 

“You returned.”

“Yes.” 

“Was the shade I mixed for you the last time you were here satisfactory?”

Maybe she was reading this wrong, Sansa thought. She’d made the man mix it no less than three times, and here the clerk probably just thought she was a difficult customer ready to complain and that Todd wouldn’t be able to handle her. “It worked out really well. I’m sorry for putting you through all of that, but I’m kind of particular.” She smiled to reassure him it was fine. “And the ‘Frisky Blue’ was exactly what I wanted.”

It was the way he stared just a smidge too long that made her wonder if Arya hadn’t been joking after all. “I knew you’d be back.”

She shook off her unease as she recalled the instructions on the missed connections ad. “So anyway, I’d like four gallons of ‘Intoxication’ in eggshell and one of ‘Silky White,’ semi-gloss, please.” 

His lips curved upward to a hint of a smile. “The green is a difficult shade to get right. And I do want to get it right.” 

Oh gods, she thought. “Everyone does such a great job here,” she said aloud. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

“You must make your displeasure known if it’s not.”

“Uh, sure.”

While the man went off to mix the paint, Sansa hurriedly texted Arya.

_Did you make up that craigslist ad about me in Lowe’s?_

He kept glancing up at her, a strange little smile playing on his lips. 

_Why?_

_I need to know RIGHT NOW_

_OMG, you’re there, aren’t you? LMAO_

“Just a few more minutes,” he assured her. 

With a breeziness Sansa did not feel, she shook her head. “It’s fine.”

“You should never be kept waiting,” he said making her a sort of bow before turning back to the machine.

_WAS IT REAL?_

_You said you weren’t setting foot in another home improvement store for months or I would have said something._

She was about to text back something nasty, when he returned to the counter. He held the cans out for her inspection. “Silky White” looked perfectly fine. “Intoxication” did not. She looked up and somehow he was now at her side.

“It’s not quite right,” he suggested. 

She wondered if they made porny horror movies because it felt very much like she was caught in the middle of one. The paint section was seemingly deserted and for someone who looked like somebody’s dad, he could probably overpower her pretty quickly. 

“I need . . . more discipline in my life.”

Sansa backed up, only to realize that she was standing right against the Behr paint chip display and that she was boxed in by a rack of brushes and her admirer. She was opening her mouth to scream when there up ahead she spotted her tenant staring with intense concentration at an endcap of picture hangers. “Baby!” she called. 

The clerk frowned. “I’m not into infantilism,” he began. “I’m into standard femdom. You wouldn’t even have to touch me if you didn’t want to. I mean, why would you? You’re perfection and I am so far from worthy.”

She stared at him.

“Tall boots. Do you own any? If not, I can buy some for you. It would be a privilege.”

Sansa tried again. “Sweetling? Could you come over here? I need your opinion on this color.”

Her tenant either hadn’t recognized her voice or more likely, Sansa sourly realized, was that focused on finding the right hook for whatever sterile piece of art he intended to hang. “STANNIS!”

Now he looked. 

“Over here.” And when Mr. Baratheon was starting to back away in alarm, Sansa pushed past the clerk to physically drag her tenant over to the counter. “Honey? What do you think about the way this green turned out? For the dining room?”

“I’ve never been in—”

Sansa angled her body so that she was away from the clerk and facing Mr. Baratheon. “I knew you weren’t really looking when I asked your opinion before, but I need your help now.” She mouthed “help me” and willed him to understand. 

If he didn’t appear to comprehend, at least he wasn’t backing away anymore. Instead he was watching the clerk and then looking back at her.

She pointed to the dab of the green paint of the can. “What do you think?”

“It looks like vomit.”

Sansa shook her head sadly. She hooked her arm through his elbow and turned back to the clerk. “I’m afraid you’ll need to mix another batch, please. Quickly.” 

Her phone buzzed. _Are you okay? Should I call 911? Sansa? I’m sorry. I never thought you’d go back there. Sansa text me???_

“These are the chairs I like. What do you think?” Sansa slipped the phone to her tenant. 

As he read Arya’s texts, his jaw tightened and from the way he was staring at the back of the clerk’s head now, she knew wasn’t going to abandon her. 

“I think we should take a look at them in person.”

Sansa took the phone back and replied to Arya. _I’m OK. Stannis Baratheon is here_ and then because Arya didn’t always learn, she added for good measure: _DON’T EVER DO THAT AGAIN_.

This time “Intoxication” looked exactly like the color on the paint chip. “Great. Thanks.”

The clerk brought the cans to her cart, handed her the slip for the cashier, and under his breath whispered, “My card is under the receipt. I can be very discreet.”

Somehow, Sansa managed to put one foot in front of the other, and keeping her tenant by her at all times, they finally got to the front of the store. Only when they were in her car did she truly relax. “Did you drive?”

“My daughter dropped me off. I was going to take the bus back. Are you all right? Should we call the police?”

Sansa glanced down at the card, registered the name Roose Bolton, and ripped it into tiny shreds. She took a deep breath and began to explain to her tenant about the missed connections boards on craigslist. “I thought my sister was joking,” she said when she was done. “But then I got there and—” she shuddered. 

“People actually post such things?”

“Oh, yeah.” Sansa wondered if he still went to Crackclaw’s. “I should show you this. You have a right to know. Hang on.” It took her more than a few minutes to find the pertinent posting, so much time had passed. “Here.”

As he read, his mouth dropped open. Finally with a visible effort, he closed it. “What does ‘DILF’ mean?”

“Uh, it means ‘daddy I’d like to,’ well, you can guess from the uh, from the context.”

Clearly from the dull red suffusing his face that probably matched her own complexion at the moment, Stannis could. “Oh.” With great dignity he drew himself up, “I did not threaten that boy with physical violence. I merely—”

“—that guy was getting off on the idea of me spanking him for messing up paint colors,” Sansa pointed out. “I think my missed connection is way worse than yours.” Sansa sighed. “From the time I was fifteen, I’ve had these weirdos after me. I don’t know why.”

“You project an image of approachability,” Stannis said.

“So it’s _my_ fault?” she demanded.

He shook his head. “I did not say that. I have the opposite problem. I do not know how to be open. I never learnt. And you can see what that has brought me.” He tapped the phone before returning it to her. 

Sansa thought about this as she started up the car. “You’re very direct. I’m not so good at that.” She put her hand on the gear shift, but did not slide it into drive just yet. “Maybe this is too forward, Mr. Baratheon, but I think there’s a lot we could learn from each other.”

“Stannis.”

“What?”

“I’d like you to call me Stannis and yes, I think we could.” He made the smallest of smiles. “I would like that very much.”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was: Sansa meeting Stannis for the first time and discovering that he is kind of a dork. She adopts him. He is annoyed at first, but then puts up with it. Obviously I went in a different direction. 
> 
> Huge thanks to: [Vana](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana) who kindly queried some of her weaving friends for me; to [shadowsfan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowsfan/pseuds/shadowsfan) for reading this over and assuring me that it did in fact not suck; to [MotherofFirkins](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MotherofFirkins/pseuds/MotherofFirkins) who vetted all my missed connections ads and who inspired me (unbeknownst to her) to use the device in the first place; and to [aunt_zelda](http://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/pseuds/aunt_zelda) who advised/provided me with some of Roose's dialogue. 
> 
> And last but not least to [kimdmagicdragon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kimdmagicdragon/pseuds/kimdmagicdragon)  
> for this wonderful thing she made for me upon request:  
> 
> 
> Photoset [here](http://grammarsaveslives.tumblr.com/post/126835095847/missed-connections-live-for-your-viewing-pleasure)


End file.
